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Languages withDeficient Counting Systems | ||
Tags: Number System | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5536 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 17 of 26 14 July 2012 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
Since it is in your "speaks" list, I'm surprised you didn't mention that Korean does this as well, except that it is capable of reaching 99 in the native system. I've just recently started Japanese, but so far it is obvious that Chinese numbers are far more dominant in Japanese than they are in Korean, though I can see why if you can't pass 10 with the native system. At least with native Korean going up to 99 it was practical to use it for items that don't often reach that level, like human ages (even though older ages are often given in Sino-Korean anyway well before they reach 100). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 18 of 26 14 July 2012 at 11:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What about English? Cardinal numbers are mostly fine if you ignore the tens and small sound changes (one two three), but the first two ordinals are completely irregular (first, second), plus there's a set of adjectives with ordinal character from Latin and another set of ordinal word prefixes from Ancient Greek. All in everyday use and potentially productive.
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| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 19 of 26 15 July 2012 at 12:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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Counting is one problem, but what if you have to decline numerals as in Russian? That's the real problem! Icelandic is so decent as to decline only the numbers from 1 to 4, but Russian? All numerals! And it doesn't get better if adjectives are involved... No, it get's worse, much worse!
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| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6703 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 20 of 26 15 July 2012 at 2:37am | IP Logged | |||||
I thought the same thing when I read my post again. That's from a few years ago when I knew nothing about Korean. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5536 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 21 of 26 15 July 2012 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ahh...I didn't look at the dates and thus didn't realize that this was a revived thread, not a new one. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rykketid Diglot Groupie Italy Joined 4834 days ago 88 posts - 146 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: French | Message 22 of 26 17 July 2012 at 11:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, the English way to name years is a bit weird but brilliant at the same time...
1990---> nineteen ninety 2012---> twenty twelve and so on and so forth... It's weird because I think that it is the only language that splits years into two numbers, in Italian we would say millenovecentonovanta (1990, one thousand nine hundred ninety), but it is also brilliant because it's much easier to say nineteen ninety rather than one thousand nine hundred ninety. Edited by Rykketid on 17 July 2012 at 11:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 23 of 26 17 July 2012 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Actually, "nineteen ninety" is just an abbreviation for "nineteen hundred ninety", and this way of counting years exists in many languages (e.g. German, Swedish, French).
So, no English speciality at all... Edited by Josquin on 17 July 2012 at 2:06pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 24 of 26 17 July 2012 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
Norwegian does this as well, although it looks like it's been decided that the years between 2000 and 2100 will be pronounced as "totusen og X" rather than "tjue-X". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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